Don't Ever Let Them Hear You Fracture
by nothing-rhymes-with-ianto
Summary: Owen has a bad day at work, and tries to remember his past. But he can't do it anymore, because he's dying forever now, and there's nothing left. Full title Don't Ever Let Them Hear You Fracture, Your Heart Is Already Too Much A Morgue


It had been a bad day. Owen had always had good days and bad, and most of his bad days were remedied by drinking steadily until he was unable to find his way around even his own flat. Now, though, he had been dead for a few weeks, and drinking was out of the question, considering his last experience.

It had been a bad day, and no one else had really noticed. A hunt was botched, too many victims and Gwen, bloody innocent, unsuspecting Gwen, had nearly gotten herself killed. Owen, too had nearly been hurt, but Tosh had seen at the last moment and shot the other host dead before she broke his arm, or worse, his neck.

Owen and Ianto had been made to clear away the bodies. The host had been a young blonde woman with an open, earnest face, her first victim a brunette wearing burgundy lipstick with big eyes that stared emptily up at him as if her life had flown away without her. Owen had pushed his reactions down while he worked, feeling the burn in the back of his throat as he spoke with Ianto, moved bodies, bickered with Jack, patched up Gwen and the whole time he knew there was a scream or tears that no longer existed or just an immense wracking sob pressing against the roof of his mouth and the back of his eyes.

It had been a bad day, but no one else had really noticed because they were all fine. Ianto and Jack flirted the whole time, even through the comms when they were chasing down the hosts, Ianto cheerfully insulting their Captain as Jack laughed. Tosh had sunk into her computer programs, and then gone home, uninjured and happy, to do whatever Tosh did at home. He'd patched Gwen up, and she'd smiled and popped home to Rhys. And no one noticed that Owen was filled with too many memories and too many latent hurts that had laid dormant for far too long and now he was going to snap or burst or break down, none of which he wanted to do in the Hub or anywhere near his colleagues who saw him only as the emotionless prick which he himself knew he wasn't but he couldn't let on because, god, what if someone got behind that shield and _prodded_? He wouldn't survive.

So he waited until he got home, far later than he wished. Under any other circumstances, he'd go straight to the scotch and start knocking it back, but Captain America and his goddamn glove had nixed that option. Instead he sat on his sofa for a while and tried to unsuccessfully watch TV because it was goddamn _hard_ to grieve and hurt and ache when you couldn't fucking sleep it all away. It just kept eating at you and digging into your flesh and taking parts of your heart and mind and you could do nothing about it. It was agony and there was no way to stop it.

So he put his feet on the sofa and his head on his knees and tried to watch TV but the solemn dark eyes of that victim and the straw-coloured hair of the host kept coming back to him, flashing and morphing until he couldn't tell the difference between the victims and Diane, Katie. Katie. Diane. It was almost surreal, the thought of them after what had happened to him, after all the shit he'd been through and why did they matter now that he was _dead_? But they were his pain, they were his tears, they were why he wanted to die and why he was still alive and why he'd been ready, so, so ready when they had been about to freeze him.

He walked into the bedroom, barely used now, too neat, he couldn't sleep anymore, so what was the point? He ignored the perfectly made sheets and went to his closet, reaching far into the back until he could see two plastic garment bags and pulled them out.

He unzipped the first one and bit his lip, laying the cloth out on his bed. The white—now a bit yellowed by time and constant removal from the bag—of Katie's wedding dress glowed back at him. He remembered coming into the shop just as she'd tried it on and having to kiss her senseless, she'd looked so beautiful. She'd smiled and giggled a little and damn if he hadn't loved her even more. He'd known then that he'd spend his life with her, that he'd do anything for her.

The second one was just as hard, as he pulled the ruby dress from its bag and laid it beside Katie's. The little crystal bows on the halter straps glinted and glittered in the light, and it looked like a waterfall of red tumbling down his bed. And he remembered Diane's smile as they danced and how she'd kissed him when he'd shown her the dress and the strangely warm night that blessed them on that rooftop on Christmas Eve and how he'd known she was longing for something and silently, with a jacket and a smile and a kiss, begged her to love him and save him and _stay_.

There was a pressure behind his eyes but he couldn't cry; he had no tears. He couldn't feel the lace and silk and soft white beneath his fingertips, or the cool slip of the red silk against his face. He ran his fingers over the cloth, trying to remember bits of the women who'd worn them, who'd meant so much to him, the women he'd loved. He could feel his muscles tighten, a sob waiting to happen, but it wouldn't be enough, it would never be enough because there was nothing to release him and he couldn't stop this pain with tears or blood or sleep or death because there was _nothing left_.

And he could only remember bits and pieces of both of them now. Katie was no longer whole in his mind; she hadn't been since the change in her. He couldn't fully recall what she was like before then, couldn't remember the way her eyes lit up or what she liked to eat on the rare days they were off from work or how she kissed him when she was sleepy in the morning and he was up before her. And Diane had never been truly whole to him. He'd known a part of her, a lonely part the way she knew the lonely part of him. Still, he could barely remember her laugh or the smell of her or the way she tossed her hair back from her face or the gentle scuff of her 1950's shoes on his carpet.

He clung to both dresses, fisting the cloth in each hand, trying to feel them, trying to pull a scent or a soft touch from them to remind him of who they were, of who _he_ was because he was losing himself by losing them and he was terrified and all he could do was go blank and stare at the wall for hours in order to stop himself from screaming in fear of losing everything and being broken and crumbling completely.

Katie would hate him now, this strange, hardened man with the mean and prickly personality, hiding so much, too much pain and vulnerability underneath, too much hurt for another to handle, too much baggage for another to want to stay. She'd think him horrid and malicious and she'd leave him alone. And Diane would pity him. Strong, independent Diane would pity him for being so broken and hurting and lost. He couldn't stand the thought of that, of what they'd think of him.

He was broken now, a preserved thing like a pinned butterfly with tattered wings and a breaking abdomen, no beauty, too delicate. He was crumbling, throwing himself into the sea and screaming with everything he had for hours where no one could see him or hear him or try to understand because even _he_ didn't understand why it had to be him that came back, why it had to be he, who long before then had been so ready and willing to die, who had been ready to go for years, who'd been thinking about it at the back of his mind since that horrible, blurred day at the hospital, since Captain Jack had walked beside him in that cold grey cemetery and intoned that "you're life doesn't end with her," and he'd immediately known that's where the man was wrong.

And as he gathered up the dresses, he hated that he was falling apart so badly, that no one could do a single thing. He stuffed himself back inside himself as he carefully placed the dresses into their bags. As he zipped the plastic closed, he pulled the strings of his own canvas closed, trying as thoroughly as possible to close it around the hurt and pain and dispossession that spilled out through the cracks and tears. Then he pressed his pain and grief way to the back of his mind as best he could, and hung the dresses in their black garment bags in the back of the closet, preserved and waiting for the next time, for another day.


End file.
